In Girls’ Athletics, There’s Still a Gender Gap--at Coach : High schools: Girls’ teams are largely coached by men. Is that a problem? The debate goes on.

Women’s athletics might have come a long way, but most of the people coaching high school girls’ sports in San Diego County are men.

Two decades after Title IX put teeth into the women’s sports movement, only 39% of the varsity head coaching positions for girls’ sports in the county are held by women. In sports such as basketball, soccer, softball and swimming, the percentage is less than one-third.

Big problem, says Encinitas sports psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino.

“It would be an unusual male coach,” she said, “who could successfully understand, who could relate to, a majority of young female athletes.”

No problem, argues Brent Rushall, a professor of physical education at SDSU.

“Coaching is dependent upon education, the ability to perform the characteristics of successful coaching, how you positively inform kids, the quality of the program, getting them to improve,” he said. “That’s very androgynous.”

It’s a He Said, She Said world.

Male coaches side with Rushall, females with Palladino. Women coaches believe their gender is an important factor because after-school sports relate to the total high school experience. Men don’t think their gender gets in the way of dealing effectively with the girl athletes, especially if there’s an open line of communication.

Though women’s coaching positions have increased because of Title IX, the percentage of women coaching three major girls’ team sports in San Diego County--basketball (29%), soccer (26%) and softball (32%)--is surprisingly small. Women are also a minority coaching girls’ tennis (46%), track and field (16%), swimming (32%) and cross-country (10%).

More opportunities were created in basketball during the 1983-84 school year when the boys and girls began playing in the winter, doubling the number of available jobs because many boys’ and girls’ teams were coached by the same person . . . a man.

Girls’ volleyball has been a sanctioned section sport since 1975--the boys did not begin playing until 1988--and 58% of the head coaches are women. Women make up 31% of the boys’ volleyball coaches.

Women coaches are dominant in badminton (54%), gymnastics (90%) and field hockey (93%), the latter two being strictly female sports in the county.

Overall, women hold 39% of the varsity head coaching positions for girls’ sports in San Diego County, but that number is skewed by the smaller 1-A and independent schools, which have a greater concentration of same-sex coaches.

Title IX, Catch-22

Before Title IX, there were 32,000 members of the Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. That organization disbanded in 1982, but 18 years later, there were 89,000 women athletes in the NCAA.

Girls’ sports have become more popular, not only at the collegiate level, but at the high school level.

Greater access to facilities created more female players, and more players meant more teams and more teams meant more coaching opportunities. Women held 90% of the coaching positions for women’s teams in 1972, but by 1990 they held just 47.3%. As heads of programs, those numbers decreased from 90% to 15.9%. At the high school level, girls coaches were 90% women in 1980, but down to 35% today, according to information released by the Women’s Sports Foundation.

There are more jobs but fewer women coaches.

Here’s the catch:

--Mariah Burton Nelson, who wrote “Good Sports: Women’s Ways of Playing,” contends that winning and losing aren’t as important to women as being involved in the playing of the game. Men tend to place more emphasis on hierarchy and who wins and loses. Women look at the competition as means to better their own level of achievment as particpants.

--Despite unprecedented opportunities in sports brought about by Title IX, Frances Munning wrote in the September, 1990, issue of Women Sports and Fitness that women’s teams became more competitive but women coaches weren’t interested in the new emphasis--winning. While female participants were increasing because of access, female coaching and administrative numbers were taking a nose-dive.

The nature of the beast built its master. The competition of women’s sport attracted male coaches, and now men dominate the coaching ranks. That is true in college, that is true in high schools, that is true in the San Diego Section.

An informal poll of athletic directors in the San Diego Section showed a preference for women coaching girls’ sports, but the prevailing theory among male and female athletic directors is that the best person should be hired regardless of gender.

And what makes a coach the most qualified from an administrative viewpoint? The number of years of coaching experience within the sport, years of experience dealing with athletes in the age group, knowledge of the sport, how the person has dealt with the administration in the past--do they cause problems?

“Mostly, I think it’s experience in dealing with teen-age kids,” Grossmont Athletic Director Judd Hulburt said. “There is a Catch-22. You really want a qualified person--you want that experience factor--but if a person doesn’t have any experience, no one will hire them. But sooner or later, someone will take a chance on that dynamic individual, so more things go into the hiring of that individual than just pure experience, though that’s a factor that’s weighed heavily.

“If the situation is exactly equal, you hire the female.”

Hulburt said Grossmont has “a high percentage of female coaches for girls’ sports.” Four of the nine girls’ sports are coached by women.

According to the 1991-92 Directory of Member Schools, among the 3-A and 2-A schools, Valhalla listed seven women coaching girls’ sports, Serra six, and Fallbrook, Morse, Escondido, La Jolla and Mission Bay five.

There are 15 3-A and 2-A girls’ basketball programs (out of 54) being run by women. Most of those are single, under 32, former San Diego players and holding their first job.

Jay Trousdale, whose Poway team is ranked No. 1 in the county and trying to defend its section Division I title, thinks he knows why those coaching demographics are the way they are.

“I’m in my mid-30s and I played high school and college ball in the ‘70s,” Trousdale said. “We had no girls’ basketball program at Kearny in 1973. More males have had a basketball background--up until the early ‘80s--and those people who are in their late ‘20s or ‘30s or older, that’s where the biggest pool of coaches come from.

“My guess is that as the years go on and more and more girls are exposed to the sport, we’ll end up having a greater amount of girls going into the coaching profession.”

Kim Lucostic, who replaced 22-year-veteran RaNae Seaman as Madison’s girls’ basketball coach, said: “For women, the only other avenue (after playing) is coaching.”

Rancho Bernardo girls’ basketball Coach Peggy Brose went to school before Title IX and is in her 14th year as a head coach. Her teams at Mt. Carmel won two section titles and she is one of the most highly-respected girls’ coaches in the county. In just its second season, Rancho Bernardo is ranked third in the county.

“The trick,” she said, “is to find women who are qualified to teach the sport and who have the time to commit to building a program. It takes a tremendous amount of time to be a varsity coach, especially if you want to be successful.”

Brose, 40, is single.

The best man for the job

is a woman--or is it?

Eleven current or former women coaches were interviewed for this story. All cited the need for coaches to serve as positive role models for female student-athletes. Ten said they held an advantage over men in dealing with their players.

They said these are the ways girls are different than boys:

--Their mood swings are greater, they’re a little more emotional and tend to be more sensitive to criticism.

--They tend to talk behind a teammate’s back, whereas boys are more outright and honest.

--They bounce back from losses easier.

--They don’t have the same competitive, intense, aggressive nature as boys.

“The problems they have as a teen-age girl, I already had,” said Marian Catholic basketball and softball Coach Robin Brainard. “I’m not sure there’s any difference (between a male and female coach) on the court, but off the court, (I) may have an advantage.”

Lupe Araico is a first-year girls’ basketball coach at Clairemont: “It’s easier for girls to realize their own expectations if they see a woman. A man might drive the lane, jump and score and expect them to do the same thing. If I do it for them, I can say, ‘If I can do it, you can do it.’ ”

When girls’ soccer began with nine teams in 1980, Mt. Carmel Coach Jim Dutton said his program was the only one that had a woman on his staff.

“I want to incorporate women into the program because I want (the players) to have role models they can relate to in a competitive sense,” Dutton said. “(Varsity assistant) Kim Franzen played at Palomar College for two years and reached the Final Four in the state for community colleges. She can bring to practice an applicability that I can’t. . . . Allison Gibson is coaching the j.v. over at Rancho Bernardo, and she led the nation in junior college scoring at Palomar. You think that wouldn’t carry some weight with my kids?”

Most women also feel the need for a positive role model for girls, but Rushall, the keynote speaker at the 1990 World Conference of Sports Psychology, said female coaches as role models is an overrated notion.

“The role models in sports are more likely to be athletes of similar ages or a year or two older, or athletes in the same sport,” he said. “The generation gap really is an important factor in identifying and mimicking behavior.”

He said, she said

So who should coach girls? It depends on who you ask.

The women coaches say they are more attuned to the subtle characteristics of being a woman. The men coaches say there are no inhibiting factors in dealing with the players, that a lack of communication--with same sex or opposite sex-teams--is inviting catastrophe. Administrators--male and female--cited the need to supervise a girls’ locker room and girls’ willingness to confide in an adult female rather than an adult male.

“We have a system,” said Trousdale, the Poway coach. “They knock on the window of the (boys’) locker room and I go outside (to talk to them). It’s a minor adjustment.”

Palladino, the female sports psychologist, says in most instances there are other adjustments as well.

“At one time, I believed there was no difference in having a male or female coach,” she said. “But through my experience as a psychologist and as a parent (of girls 10 and 8), I don’t think that’s so, and I think it’s especially true for youngsters.”